FCC Requires Backup Power For 210K Cell Towers

1sockchuck alerts us to an article in Data Center Knowledge that explores ramifications from the FCC's decision a couple of months back to require backup power for cell sites and other parts of the telecom infrastructure. The new rule was prompted by wireless outages during Hurricane Katrina. There are more than 210,000 cell towers in the US, as well as 20,000 telecom central offices that will also need generators or batteries. Municipalities are bracing for disputes as carriers try to add generators or batteries to cell sites on rooftops or water towers. The rules will further boost demand in the market for generators, where there are already lengthy delivery backlogs for some models.

You mean they didn't before?

[dgatwood (11270)]

Yikes!

That's alright, I know a guy

[Smordnys s'regrepsA (1160895)]

I know a guy, he can get you all the batteries you want, alike the brade of your choice, at 1/5 the price! [slashdot.org]

Re:You mean they didn't before?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Cellphones weren't considered vital infrastructure before. And even now it is hard to argue that they can be since you can't always guarantee a usable signal in all locations (which makes it less useful to emergency responders) and since cellphone networks can easily be overwhelmed in emergencies where everybody gets on the phone at once, like during the 9/11 attacks.

At the same time, when cellphones are usable, they can be very helpful. If many of the cell towers didn't fail during Katrina, it would have been much easier to help many of the victims and coordinate the rescue in a more efficient manner.

Re:

[Forge (2456)]

I find this whole discusion hilarius.

Here in Jamaica one celphone company spnt a year advertising it's performance during huricane Ivan. What's worse is that the other major competitor had everything. Batterys, Generators etc... The mistake thy made was in the size fuel tanks at each site. They figured a couple days suply would be enogh.

With the number of Cellsites they have , this ment a small army roaming the country with botles of gasoline to keap the network at least partialy running.

And here are you y

Re:You mean they didn't before?

[liquidpele (663430)]

I would think that it would be important to require a type of "emergency mode", where if the power goes down and the battery/generator gets down to 50%, it will only accept calls to 911 and/or other emergency numbers. That is of course assuming that not connecting other calls would save power...

Re:

[TooMuchToDo (882796)]

Most critical unmanned infrastructure uses natural gas generators onsite, not stored diesel, so they're not going to run out unless the natural gas infrastructure is damaged as well (which is a definite possibility in cases such as Katrina).

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[monsted (6709)]

The only problem with diesel is that it goes bad after a while. We provide emergency power with three V12 diesel engines (providing roughly 300 kW at full capacity), but only keep about four days worth of diesel in the tank so we don't have to replace as much when it degrades. We do have special agreements with the gas companies, being a vital infrastructure site, though.

IANAS (scientist), but i believe it is microbial growth in the fuel that ruins it.

In Argentina ...

[GNUALMAFUERTE (697061)]

ALL cell towers operate usually on two different power sources, plus a generator as a backup.

Needing a law to require something so obvious as a backup power source is sad, but true ...

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[404 Clue Not Found (763556)]

How do you know these things? Were you next to the site when it switched to its generator?

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[xaxa (988988)]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACCOLC [wikipedia.org] -- The article says that in Britain, the emergency services (or anyone else important, e.g. doctors) can register their phone to be given priority during an emergency. Other users have to take it in turns to use the network.

I don't know if they have backup power though... I've never noticed either my mobile or the land line phone to be down during a power cut, but then there aren't many.

Re:

[SmoothTom (455688)]

In the United States that sort of priority exists for hospitals, police, fire, doctors, military, and other "essential" personnel/agencies and is called "essential service." The standard was to have three levels of "essential service" lines: initially all lines would have service, if it got really bad, only the essential service lines would be operational, and as things got even worse it would progressively shut down the lessor priority lines until only the critical public safety lines were left. (In the 30

At last

[weorthe (666189)]

Millions of people will be able to call each other to ask "is your power out too?"

Re:

[Architect_sasyr (938685)]

That is the most insightful comment I've seen today. It's like the users who call you and ask if the mail server is down as if I wouldn't notice something like the most critical service in the company stopping...

Re:At last

[Kent Recal (714863)]

I usually just say "Yes, and the phone system is down, too. We're working on it, can you get back to me later?".
Usually they just say ok and hang up, without even noticing...

Re:At last

[jamesh (87723)]

Not quite as silly as you might think. In rural locations, it is quite possible that the power failure is very local (eg a possum climbed up the pole the night before and cooked a fuse (and itself)), and the power company won't know about it unless you tell them. Phoning up a neighbor is a reasonable thing to do in that case.

This used to happen all the time at my mums place. The outage would affect her and the weekend house across the road (who would most likely be away). The neighbor up the hill would be a good indicator to it being a possum induced fuse failure or something more widespread.

Ditto for a failure in your fusebox. If everyone else has power and you don't, there isn't much use calling the power company... I know most people reading this would have a tripped breaker fixed in a few seconds, but maybe your grandmother wouldn't know how to, and in fact she might still have fuse wire instead of a resettable breaker.

Even for the mail server case, a user in a remote branch who hasn't received any email all morning would probably ask if the server was down before bothering you with their specific issue. Of course a good helpdesk would put up a recorded message in that case eg 'We are currently experiencing problems with our email server, we expect the problem to be fixed in xxx minutes'.

Still have a problem

[ninjapiratemonkey (968710)]

The backup generators will probably not be very effective in preventing outages during natural disasters. Consider New Orleans: how many of generators can work while submerged underwater? Or California, where should an earthquake knock out the original power to a tower, it is just as likely to knock out the generator.

24 hours is not enough

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

A generator is far less likely to get knocked out that power lines. Consider how many points of failure there are in grid-provided power.

24 hours is sufficent to cover for brief, minor outages. It is not enough to cover for anything close to a natural disaster where many sites lose power and there are not enough resources to fix them all in 24 hours.

Here in New Zealand, all our telecom has 24 hour battery backup but it is sized "just right". Last year we lost power for approx 40 hours due to a severe snow storm. The phones lasted for appeox 25 hours.

Re:Still have a problem

[techno-vampire (666512)]

Or California, where should an earthquake knock out the original power to a tower, it is just as likely to knock out the generator.

Not so. That all depends on where the damage is. If it's at, or fairly near the tower, quite possibly. If the power's out because a power line was dropped by the temblor, there's a good chance that the cell tower and any generator are just fine. I remember after the Northridge Quake there were major power outages, but the equipment worked just fine as soon as the power was back. As far as floods go, there's no reason not to install them in waterproof rooms to make sure they're OK even if that room's under water.

Re:

[flyingfsck (986395)]

Well duh, how many US cities are built under sea level?

New Orleans should be used as a land fill, till it is sufficiently raised to be viable again.

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[mcrbids (148650)]

The backup generators will probably not be very effective in preventing outages during natural disasters. Consider New Orleans: how many of generators can work while submerged underwater? Or California, where should an earthquake knock out the original power to a tower, it is just as likely to knock out the generator.

Consider... Backup power good for just 72 hours, (batteries, etc) and connections by directional microwave. (common) Most disasters are short-lived events. It only takes one cell tower to provi

Re:Still have a problem

[techno-vampire (666512)]

That's ridiculous, and I'm surprised you posted it.

You must be new here.

Solar

[proudfoot (1096177)]

Maybe self powering solar paneled towers might be better. You'd be helping the environment as well as providing backup. And the height of these towers are perfect for a wind turbine + battery installation as well.
Even if it's not perfectly reliable, such a tower could be connected to the grid, and in the event of emergency, it'll be at the very least, intermittent,which is enough for some traffic to flow out for a very long time. With a battery/generator, you'd only have power, while reliable, for a limited amount of time.

Re:Solar and Wind Turbine

[Tisha_AH (600987)]

To provide solar power to a cell site would require several hundred square feet of space to mount the panels. Sizing a solar power system for infrastructure requires planning for when the amount of sun is at the minimum (approx 2 hours during wintertime at northern latitudes). A aolar system must put a full charge on the battery system to account for charging losses, battery inefficiency, and the continual demand of the load. To match up to a solar power system you need a very significant battery string (when I do system calculations I assume that the system can go for three days without sun). Mounting a wind turbine on a cell tower is problematic too. An antenna structure has a loading (ANSI 222 (f or g)) that has to account for ice, maximum wind and the surface area of the tower, feedline, antennas, etc... A wind turbine adds ALOT of loading to a structure. I suspect that 90% of the cell towers out there right now could not pass the structural analysis under ANSI.

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[Dahamma (304068)]

Right, I'm sure all those churches, schools, etc that agreed (with compensation, of course) to put a cleverly inconspicuous cell tower in their steeples and flag poles are going to love 1000 sq feet of solar panels, or a giant wind turbine in the middle of town.

Though as the article mentions, it's not like they are going to allow a big generator and battery, either...

This was a reason I still have a landline....

[ip_freely_2000 (577249)]

During the east coast power failure a couple of years back, cell phones were useless because the towers were dead. Landlines worked just fine. I've always felt that the cell companies weren't doing enough to build out their infrastructure to support big events. They'd just have enough in place to provide average service.

Ma Bell and the landline service has been built out for generations and it shows.

Re:

[XO (250276)]

Verizon and Sprint had generators operating many of their cell sites into the 3rd day. Unfortunatly, after the 3rd day, gasoline supplies began to run out, and the gas stations were pretty much all closed, unless you could bring it in from the nearest places outside the blackout zone, which to where I was was about 90 miles.

A problem that won't exist

[techno-vampire (666512)]

Municipalities are bracing for disputes as carriers try to add generators or batteries to cell sites on rooftops or water towers.

I find it hard to believe that this is going to be an issue. The batteries don't have to be up on the roof, or on top of the water tower to be effective. Yes, the closer the better, but I doubt there will be more than a handful of places where there's no other place for them.

All CDMA are backed up already

[XO (250276)]

All CDMA systems have power backup facilities built into their equipment. ALL of them have battery power to some degree, and have interfaces for generators to be connected to them as well.

Disaster response?

[brownsteve (673529)]

I am a ham radio operator and concern myself with disaster preparedness. With POTS (plain old telephone system) everyone is guaranteed their own connection, complete with line backup power so you can use the phone even if the power's out. Sometimes the switches overload and "all circuits are busy" but in most situations it's worked pretty well for the last century.

I worry about the trend to move to cell phones. We rely on both our cell phone's battery and the cell tower to stay powered. We also rely on available frequencies to use the tower. In Katrina and recently the San Diego fires, everyone immediately got on their cell phones and jammed all of the towers. Is there enough redundancy, power, and capacity to handle the next disaster? I don't think we should wait for the next hurricane to prove if cell towers can handle an emergency.

Re:

[JavaManJim (946878)]

Hammy, your mind is in the right place. The current paradigm is for flash and dash on the cheap. Business continuity is an orphan project at companies. We need to roll back to 1960 and plan for outages! For just the reasons you describe.

When I worked for ARCO Oil and Gas in the 1980's, they counted on the power being out. So they spent 13 million 1980 dollars to run a duplicate high power line from another grid to back up their data center. So their data center was served by two separate power grids. Also A

Re:

[guruevi (827432)]

Well technically it should be simpler and more effective to run a "small" single-site tower (esp. in an emergency) than to run a grid that covers the same area that has random lines running under and above ground that could randomly be cut, over- or abused, short circuited, damaged and that needs extensive operations to be totally replaced. That the cell phone companies cheaped out on their customers while landlines have been installed, regulated and supported historically by local and federal governments (

Re:

[smchris (464899)]

Count me in as old and crusty too.

Seems like something promoted by the generator manufacturers' association. 210,000? I guess that's why they're the FCC and I'm not. Big thinking.

So, they'll sit in their boxes at each cell company's disaster-fortified warehouse until needed? Or it will provide jobs for people to change the oil and gas and test (and guard?) them periodically on or off site? I'm assuming the former. So it's sort of like the big Pharma handouts we give them to stock warehouses of drugs t

I am in a Outage RIGHT NOW with NO Cell Service!

[Zymergy (803632)]

I am currently in a power outage with NO Cellular Service (of any type)! This actually *sucks* and is inexcusable (considering what I pay!)
Those Damn Ice Storms here in the Central US (today and yesterday). (Generators/UPS are so so nice!)
Had Cell Service (with AT&T/Cingular) for about 3 hours following the outage (currently the largest single outage in my state's history)... but apparently the cell-site UPS batteries drained and the tower site did not have a generator...
I am going to ask for a prorated refund for my service plan (and they will legally HAVE TO give me that discount for my contracted service being out).
If EVERYONE called up their service providers and asked specifically for their prorated discount for service being out (on that given day)... I bet they would invest in UPS/Generator combos at the cell tower sites... -Z

Re:

[Ksevio (865461)]

You're in a power outage posting to slashdot? Do you have a backup satalite link and generator just in case you lose internet for a few hours?

Re:

[LynnwoodRooster (966895)]

Hey, a geek has to have his priorities!

Re:I am in a Outage RIGHT NOW with NO Cell Service

[Telecommando (513768)]

Hey, I feel for you. Back in `93 (I think, don't quote me), we had an ice storm hit our area pretty hard. Some people were without power for over 2 weeks. And the cell phones were useless after the first couple of hours when the batteries at the towers went dead. Only the police, fire and utilities had any radio communications at the time because they had planned their systems for just this type of emergency.

Oh, some cell sites had generators, but the cell co.'s had assumed they could just grab a gas can at

Thief Opportunity

[JavaManJim (946878)]

EASY PICKINGS? In Texas and the nearby states like OK, KS, NM, etc, there are zillions of cell towers in the middle of nowhere. What an opportunity for thieves if these all had little generators nearby. I hope a better paradigm that what I describe is used.

NEW CASH COW? Its bad enough in Dallas where miles lights were out along the divided highways in the Summer of 2006 because thieves pulled out the connecting. This was bad in the summer of 2006 and its better now since openings have been welded shut. I can see generators being the new cash cow for thieves.

Thanks
Jim

ambient power

[mattr (78516)]

They should require some kind of ambient power generation also to be included. Solar cells are well understood perhaps but IIRC they do not have long lifetimes. So either some special long-lifetime solar cell, or something that uses environmental (humidity, electrostatic charge, temperature, gas, wind, etc.) gradients. It only has to be able to provide a very short window of time, perhaps only 30 min. per day, in which it can operate without any input from the power grid. If such a thing exists/can be devel

Re:

[inKubus (199753)]

So you're saying for a worst case situation, where the batteries die, the generators are out of fuel, everything is down--and this solar panel or whatever sits there all day gathering sun and then at a predetermined time it runs the tower for 30 minutes so people can text their parents or whatever. Not bad idea, it would be extremely cheap to implement, and in the worst case scenario, it would continue to allow some communications. Coupled with fuel cell or hand-crank power for the cell phones themselves

Australian Cyclone Experience

[robbak (775424)]

As an Australian who recently cam through a major cyclone (Larry), I too am surprised to learn that Americans were installing mobile phone sites _without_ backup power. If anyone is complaining about the cost to retrofit, then go complain to the person who installed the site without it in the first place!! (Oh, that was you too? Poor little idiot.)
There was major problems with the telephone systems. The landline systems had 24 hour battery backups, but beyond that, they had to rely on workers delivering gen

Lots o' problems

[linuxwrangler (582055)]

Having gone through pager/cellular outages in the almost-all-California almost-all-day power outage a few years back as well as through rolling blackouts I applaud this effort. It's even more important as more and more people go wireless only. But it's gonna hoit...

There are already plenty of hand-wringers who try to block any cell site due to "harmful radiation". Now that same group is going to be heading to city hall to complain about noisy/polluting/etc. generators and stacks of batteries full of lead an

I've dealt with this....

[SamMichaels (213605)]

My job requires me to spring into action when disaster strikes. On my way to an unfamiliar site, I was completely lost due to a closed road. Power was off so long the battery backup at the cell tower failed. Luckily, I was able to get there after a whole lot of driving in circles.

We're putting too many eggs in one basket. That's one of the reasons why I'm an amateur radio operator [emergency-radio.org] (ham). If I had my license during the aforementioned problem, I could have easily gotten the other engineer on the airwaves

Katrina

[tsotha (720379)]

Regarding hurricane Katrina:

I work for a large cell carrier. We had backup power to every single cell in the area. In fact, after the hurricane we were doing pretty well, though some of the towers were taken out by debris. Only a couple were actually submerged. We lost a few trunk lines, but for the most part the system was working.

The problem was we didn't have any way to get gas to the generators. The roads were impassible, and based on news reports we were reluctant to send crews in to the sites we could reach for security reasons. So after a couple days the cell sites started going offline one at a time as the generators ran out of power.

As far as I know every one of our sites, in the entire country, already has a couple days worth of backup power.

There is only one real solution for this.

[F34nor (321515)]

Electromechanical Batteries or EMB or Flywheel Batteries by their old name. These have the highest power density of any energy storage system. They are so reliable they can be buried or sent into space. They can hole huge amounts of power. They can be recharged very quickly. They do not burst into fire. They are not hazardous.

Specific Power EMB (5-10 kW/kg) Lead Acid (0.1-0.5 kW/kg)
Energy Recovery EMB (90%-95%) Lead Acid (60%-70%)
Specific Energy EMB (100 Wh/kg) Lead Acid (30-35 Wh/kg)
Service Lifetime EMB (>10 years) Lead Acid (3-5 years)
Self Discharge Time EMB (Weeks to months) Lead Acid (variable)
Hazardous Chemicals EMB (none) Lead Acid (Lead, Sulfur, & Acid)
"A new look at an Old Idea the Electromechanical Battery" Science and Technology Review April 1996 by
Dangerous EMB (possibly in massive physical impact) Lead Acid (High fire danger)

Caterpillar and Beacon power already sell off the shelf UPS based on EMB for anything up to a whole grid substation. These are the answer to balancing the output of solar and wind power as well, far better than ice batteries or lead acid. These are the answer to solving our reliability problems with the national power grid (if each substation could self power for even a few 1/10s of a second you can reroute the grid. In fact these are even a possible answer to batteries for cars thanks to new fiber based flywheels instead of steel. There is literally no sound reason to use Lead acid to backup a data center, a telephone switch, or a cell tower anymore.

The FCC should demand that the power backup meets a certain level of reliability and power density within a top percentile of the most cost effective solution so that people don't use old outdated technology just because it is a system that they are accustomed to.

Re:

[thegrassyknowl (762218)]

If the power was knocked out to a cell phone tower due to a natural disaster, wouldn't the phone lines/trunk also be knocked out

That's not strictly true. Power is often trunked in from considerable distance away. If the natural disaster effects the generation area and not the cell tower then the cell tower can be out even though it still has connectivity to the world.

Further, a lot of cell towers use microwave links to the nearby towers and even back to the phone company base; particularly towers in r

Re:

[flyingfsck (986395)]

Most wireless towers use wireless backbones - all they need is backup power. The POTS has backup power already.

Re:

[Telecommando (513768)]

No. The landline companies have their own battery/generator systems and have had them for years. I don't know if they were ever mandated to have them or if they just considered it good business sense. Even during a major, prolonged, power outage landlines are almost certain to work. Now if the phone lines go down due to storm damage, that's a different story.

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[headbulb (534102)]

A cell tower can be any miles of distance away from the central office. A single central office can have a whole city or multiple cities that it covers.

Just because power is out in one town does not mean it would be off in another where that office is located. Even if the power was off where the central office is the equipment there is power backed up. Afterall it's providing service for a large area.

If power goes out in one town and takes out the towers for that town it's annoying, But nothing like having

Re:

[headbulb (534102)]

The generators are large and bolted to the concrete.

They arn't going to be looted. Then a thief would have to know how to hookup a permanent installation generator. (It could be a 3 phase generator which requires a equal load. On all the phases)

Plus something worth that much would have it's own serial # So if they tried to sell it. They run the risk of getting caught.

But then I have heard stories of people trying to steal copper from live mains. Getting killed in the process.

Re:power isn't the only problem

[TooMuchToDo (882796)]

GSM does allow you to prioritize emergency traffic:

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:cwTrqX9BMl8J:www.cse.umkc.edu/~beardc/WorkSummary.pdf+GSM+emergency+priority+traffic&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us&client=firefox-a [64.233.167.104]

Wireless Priority Services
- Became a high priority after September 11, 2001.
Extension of the U.S. wireline GETS system that had been around for many years.
Used the same call queuing approach.
Only available from GSM providers
- Only GSM has priority call identifiers.